The federal government manages more than 1.4 million square miles of land in the
United States. Over 90 percent of these federal public lands are located in the
western states. In some of these states, the proportion of federal control is
quite high: Containing over 95,000 square miles of public lands, 87 percent of
Nevada is managed by federal agencies  the highest proportion in the nation.

Along with the outer continental shelf, federal lands contain most of our fossil
fuel resources and account for most of our domestic mineral production. Although
the majority of federal lands is open to the development of renewable and nonrenewable
energy and other resources, some is reserved for wilderness preservation, recreation
or military activities. Other important commercial activities include logging
and grazing, as well as wind and geothermal energy development.

How
we manage public access and wilderness values is one of the most enduring
policy questions.

A series of laws enacted in the 1970s requires that federal agencies ensure that
no activity will unduly harm the environment and ecological health of the lands.
Under the philosophy of multiple use, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and
the U.S. Forest Service are responsible for managing most of the nations
public lands open to both recreational and commercial uses. The multiple-use philosophy
directs conservation of potentially renewable resources, with simultaneous use
by a variety of activities. The BLM and Forest Service are also responsible for
managing the wilderness and other restricted lands within their jurisdictions.

For these two agencies, striking a balance between competing public interests
and meeting the criteria stipulated by environmental statutes is becoming increasingly
difficult. The encroachment of urban development on public lands presents additional
challenges, as the agencies struggle to address the threat posed to communities
by wildfire even as they work to provide recreational access.

Congress and the Bush administration are considering changes to a number of policies
that may influence recreational access and commercial development on our public
lands for some time.

Management tools and challenges

The most powerful of the environmental statutes, the National Environmental
Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), requires that the federal government consider the
environmental consequences of its actions. One of its most important provisions
requires the preparation of environmental impact statements. The regulations
adopted to enforce NEPA and other environmental laws not only increased the
requirement for public involvement during the consideration of proposed activities,
but also increased and changed the criteria that the agencies must evaluate.

The increasing involvement of the federal government in most aspects of daily
life and commerce makes NEPA far-reaching in its authority. In the eastern states,
the preponderance of private lands limits NEPAs jurisdiction with respect
to many land uses. In western states, however, the statutes authority
is virtually pervasive. The greater number of federally designated threatened
and endangered species in the arid, wide open spaces  a consequence of
the watersheds that have become increasingly diminished and isolated in the
last 10,000 to 12,000 years  also tends to increase the criteria NEPA
must address in the West.

The increasing cost, uncertainty and time required to provide permits for activities
in compliance with these environmental statutes has led to calls for congressional
action. Frustration with the slow pace of wildland fuel-reduction projects,
backlogs in the renewal of grazing permits, and demands to accelerate oil and
gas exploration, for example, have led to proposals that would limit the NEPA
process in order to expedite these activities.

Perhaps the most comprehensive proposal under consideration, the administrations
Healthy Forests initiative (and parallel legislation) seeks to expedite
forest fire fuel-reduction activities by excluding them from a number of NEPA
requirements. One provision would limit to two the number of alternative actions
that must be considered under the NEPA process. Other provisions would limit
the legal right to appeal agency decisions to those entities that have participated
in the public process, and restrict the time allowed for the filing of those
appeals.

Environmental advocates warn that limiting the alternatives that must be considered
under NEPA gives an agency or the proponents of an action the ability to manipulate
the process. By carefully selecting the scope of a few alternatives, proponents
might be able to devise a process that gives preference to their desired action.
If initiatives such as the Healthy Forest proposal prove successful in streamlining
the permitting process and expediting fuel-reduction projects, we can expect
demands for additional NEPA exclusions regarding projects judged to be of critical
public interest.

Access and wilderness

Policies being developed to regulate the use of off-highway vehicles and grant
rights-of-way on public lands also have important implications for public access
and resource development. The dramatic increase in the use and impact of all-terrain
vehicles, motorcycles and mountain bikes on public lands has brought together
an unlikely coalition  ranging from ranchers to environmentalists 
demanding action on the issue. Some federal agencies are considering restricting
the use of off-highway vehicles to specific areas; others are considering excluding
all vehicular access to some lands through wilderness designation or other regulatory
means.

Early this year, the administration issued regulations governing the ability
of state and local governments to assert ownership of roads and rights-of-way
established on federal lands prior to 1976. Referred to as RS-2477 (for revised
statute 2477), this rule featured prominently when the state of Utah and
the federal government announced a settlement that reversed President Clintons
executive order establishing 2.6 million acres of wilderness in Utah. Rights-of-way
granted under the terms of this settlement could provide conduits for new natural
gas pipelines and electrical transmission lines. Environmental advocates are
unhappy with the reversal, and worry that a host of RS-2477 claims will generate
a road network that subdivides withdrawn lands and limits the preservation afforded
by wilderness designations.

Adding fuel to the fire, just a few weeks ago BLM determined that only those
lands already identified as wilderness study areas (WSAs) would be considered
for future wilderness designation. This action upset environmental activists,
who assert that the mapping undertaken when most WSAs were identified 20 years
ago was inadequate. Even so, the future of the existing WSAs is uncertain. In
Nevada alone, despite recent legislation that finalized wilderness designations
in the southern part of the state, the status of 83 WSAs remains to be determined.
With Congress generally deadlocked on the issue of wilderness designations,
policies regarding public access are sure to generate controversy, particularly
as they exert important influences on energy and resource development.

How we manage public access and wilderness values is one of the most enduring
policy questions  one which affects the management of both resource development
and the wildland-urban interface. Not all of these debates will prove as controversial
as, say, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. But the involvement
of well-informed geoscientists will be critical to helping inform the discussions
and provide possible solutions.

Kennedy is the fifth American
Geological Institute Congressional Science Fellow, one of about 30 sponsored by
science and engineering societies. Support for the AGI fellowship is provided
by the AGI Foundation. Send e-mail to Kennedy at Larry_Kennedy@reid.senate.gov.

The views presented here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the
views of Sen. Reid or the American Geological Institute and its member societies.